neat or elegant villas, fitted out as lodg- | with a public clock; the Episcopalian ing-houses. It contains a key post office, a banking office, a public reading-room, a well-kept bowling-green, four places of worship, and three large hotels-the Royal, the Queen's, and the Westerton Arms. The Established Church is a handsome Gothic edifice of 1859, with two windows of stained glass; the Free Church, a Gothic edifice of 1854, with a spire 108 feet high; the United Presbyterian Church, a neat structure of 1846, Church, an elegant Gothic edifice of 1857, with nave, chancel, and belfry. The Royal and the Queen's Hotels keep each a public library and a table d'hôte; and the former has pleasure-grounds with jets d'eau. Omnibuses run several times a-day, during summer, to Stirling. The average number of visitors to Bridge of Allan during the last few years has been nearly 40,000. LXXVI.--FROM INVERSNAID, BY ABERFOYLE, TO STIRLING. 964. LOCH CHON is 2 miles long, | the navvies on the Glasgow Water-works, south-eastward, and about three-fourths was erected near the head of Loch of a mile wide. Its scenery is romantic. Sloping hills, luxuriantly wooded with oak, ash, birch, and alder, line it along the north-east. A precipitous mountain, sprinkled far up with aged birches, and rising to an altitude of at least 1500 feet, flanks it along the south-west. A streamlet, coming from the north-western crest of this mountain to the lake, descends with velocity little less than that of a cataract, over a fall of more than 1000 feet. An islet, with a heronry, lies in the lake's bosom. The waters contain trout of from 1 to 4 lbs., equal in flavour to those of Loch Leven; and pike of from 15 to 20 lbs. An extemporized village, called Sebastopol, for the accommodation of Chon. 965. LOCH ARD extends from west to east, and is 4 miles long, and from 3 to 9 furlongs wide; but contracts, about 7 furlongs from the foot, into a gorge 200 feet long, so as to be divided practically into two lakes. Its scenery exhibits combinations of strength and beauty, romance and gracefulness, of a very high order. Some views of it, with Benlomond on the sky line, are sublime; other views, or pieces, show some resemblance to Loch Katrine and the Trosachs; and others, of a close kind, are nooks and sweeps of laughing witchery. Its shores are intricate, and finely wooded; and its flanks, though not 320 ABERFOYLE-MENTEITH. mountainous, are high enough to be | Aberfoyle measures about 2 miles in effective, and so broken and bosky as to strike the eye more than smooth Alps ten times their altitude. One of the best views of the lake is got from a high wooded isthmus at its contracting gorge; and another of the best, as well as the most comprehensive, from a height on its east side, a little below the Priest's Craig. A few rocky islets lie near the shore; and one of them, called Duke Murdoch's Isle, contains the ruins of a castle built by Murdoch, Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland, the reputed place of his retreat at the time when he was made prisoner, and carried away for execution at Stirling. A romantic, copse-clad ravine, on the lake's east side, about a mile from the head, contains the picturesque cascade of Ledard, a double fall of 12 and 50 feet, described by Sir Walter Scott in both "Waverley" and "Rob Roy." A mural rock, on the same side, near the foot, from 30 to 50 feet high, gives a strikingly distinct repeating echo; and a gnarled oak-trunk, overhanging this rock, is believed to have been the tree on which Sir Walter Scott depicts his "Bailie Nicol Jarvie" as suspended by the skirts. Loch Ard contains fish of the same size and quality as Loch Chon. The residences of Ledard, C. E. Hope Vere, Esq.; Glassert House, J. Middleton, Esq.; Lochard Lodge, Robert Dick, Esq.; Lower Lochard Lodge, George Middleton, Esq.; Lochard Cottage, J. Napier, Esq.; and Lochard New Cottage, stand on the lake's shores. 966. ABERFOYLE clachan, now marked by a few large stones, occurs on the Avon Dhu at the influx of Duchray Water; and Aberfoyle Inn, "the Bailie Nicol Jarvie," a recent elegant erection, occurs a mile further east. The Avon Dhu is properly the Forth, but receives here the name of Avon Dhu, or "black river," from the sombre appearance given to it by overhanging woods and heights. The inhabitable part of its vale around length and half mile in breadth; lies less than 60 feet in elevation above the level of the sea; is flanked in part by the precipices of Craigmore, about 1000 feet high, and elsewhere by hills shading off to mountains; and contracts at Craigmore, toward Loch Ard, into a wild defile, called the Pass of Aberfoyle. This pass, in old times, was a portal to the Highland fastnesses of the clans and caterans, witnessed many a rough onset between conflicting parties fighting for the mastery, and was the scene of the defeat of a party of Cromwell's soldiers by Graham of Duchray. A cascade of about 90 feet in leap, trivial in dry weather, but splendid after rain, occurs in a wild gash of the hill, about a quarter of a mile north of the hotel. Many spots and objects derive interest from Sir Walter Scott's novel of "Rob Roy." Aberfoyle has a post office under Stirling, and a parish church; and its inn supplies tourists with horses and conveyances. A road of 5 miles, practicable for horsemen and for droskies, goes direct from it to the Trosachs. Duchray Castle, formerly a stronghold of the Grahams, is 3 miles to the south-west; and Gartmore House and village, the former the seat of Robert C. Graham, Esq., the latter with a post office under Stirling, two places of worship, and about 280 inhabitants, are 23 miles to the south. 967. LOCH DRUNKIE, 2 miles northnorth-west of Aberfoyle, on the road to Callander, has an irregular outline, and measures about 3 miles in circuit. Its waters contain fine red-flesh trout of half a pound and upwards; its shores are clothed with oak coppice; and its screens rise to hilly height, and are grandly overtopped by Benvenue and Benledi. A vantage-ground a little way up the south hill gives a noble view to the double summit of Benmore. 968. MENTEITH district comprehends most of the north side of the basin of the THORNHILL-BLAIRDRUMMOND. 321 Forth, from Benlomond to the Ochils; | range of heights to the north of Port of Menteith commands a gorgeous, comprehensive view of the lakes and glens around the Trosachs from Benlomond to the Lowlands. 969. THORNHILL and Norrieston are two villages, mutually adjacent, the former with a post office, under Stirling, the latter with two places of worship, the two with jointly about 650 inhabitants. Kincardine Church, a handsome Gothic edifice of 1816, is 4 miles to the east. 970. BLAIRDRUMMOND, on the right side of Teith Water, 1 mile and gave the title of Earl from 1428 to 1694, to a branch of the family of Graham. Menteith Loch, in the centre of it, 3 miles east of Aberfoyle, is a circular sheet of water, about 5 miles in circumference, possessing much quiet beauty. Three islands lie in it, called the Dog Isle, Tulla, and Inchmahome; fine old woods adorn the northern shores; and gentle, undulating hills, rising on the north side into bold mountain, form the cincture. On Dog Isle stood the kennel of the Earls of Menteith; on Tulla stand the ruins of the Earls' mansion; and on Inchmahome are extensive remains, in ele-east of Kincardine Church, is a spagant Gothic architecture, of an Augustinian priory which was founded by King Edgar, and had four dependent chapels. King Robert Bruce visited this priory; Queen Mary was domiciled in it in her fifth year, prior to her removal to France; and James VI., as well as some other notable persons, made visits to it. The lake contains abundance of perch and pike, and some fine trout, remarkably shy. Port of Menteith, with a good modern inn, a parish church, and an elegant mausoleum of the Gartmore family, is on the north shore; and the mansions of Lochend, Miss Hamilton; Blairhoyle, Kenneth Brodie, Esq.; and Rednock, John Graham Stirling, Esq., are in the neighbourhood. Ruskie Loch, 24 miles to the north-north-east, contains pike and great plenty of perch; and Goodie Water, issuing from Loch Menteith, and running 73 miles eastward to the Forth, contains fine trout. The cious mansion, the seat of H. Home Drummond, Esq., amid a richly wooded park. Part of the estate connected with it is an alluvial tract along the Forth, formerly overlaid by deep bog, and ingeniously reclaimed by cutting away the bog piecemeal, and sending it adrift on the river. The skeleton of a whale, a reach of Roman road, a number of small Roman relics, and two curious, ancient, wooden wheels, were found in the bog in the course of the reclamation. Ochtertyre, 1 mile south-east of Blairdrummond, was the residence of Mr. J. Ramsay, the associate of Dr. Blacklock, Robert Burns, and Sir Walter Scott; and is now the seat of the Right Hon. Sir David Dundas. Craigforth, on the right side of the Forth, near the Bridge of Drip, is the property of the Callander family, and takes its name from a bold, wooded, picturesque crag. |